


Inside Catra's mind

by MagicoolKoala



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, NSFW Chapters, One Shot, character backstory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25439020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicoolKoala/pseuds/MagicoolKoala
Summary: A collection of One-Shots with bits of Catra's story. From her childhood, to her time as Force Captain and to the post-war.Most of this are based on little personal headcanons on Catra, but trying to keep true to whatever appeared on the show (And whatever Noelle has said to be canon)
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Catra/Double Trouble (She-Ra)
Kudos: 16





	1. Memories

She stared at her, like she had done a million times already. But this time something was different.  
The blonde looked relaxed, her chest going rhythmically up and down, her hair was down, and Catra could the different scars around her body  
Those damned scars.  
Adora was so beautiful, so perfect, and she had hurt her so much. Not only the scars but all the other awful things she had put her through… Catra would never understand why she had been forgiven for all those things, and could only hope that whatever reason Adora had given herself to forgive her was good enough to not leave her again.  
She wouldn’t be able to stand that.  
Just remembering the night Adora left made her want to cry.

She was sleeping right next to her like she used to whenever Adora would have a bad night of sleep. The feline would never wake her up, she would slide into the girl’s bed and stay there for a while caressing her hair and whispering that everything was fine, and once the blonde had calmed down she stayed at the foot of her bed just to make sure she was fine.   
But that night was different. Catra was already curled up at Adora’s feet, and was waiting to fall asleep at any second now when she heard her starting to have nightmares again, she was ready to go comfort her like always but Adora was wide awake now, and getting out of bed. Where was she going?  
“Hey, Adora…?” She went after her and tried to follow but it was the blonde herself who stopped her and told her to stay, and for whatever reason, she listened.  
So out of character for her, Catra never listened to anyone, not even Adora most of the time, but she stayed behind, because Adora said she didn’t want to get her in trouble, because Adora assured her it was just a quick look around the woods, because Adora was just going to pick up a non-existent sword, and maybe as soon as she realized it she would be back and they could both go to sleep again.  
So she waited.  
And waited.  
Every passing hour made her more desperate, what if she had gotten hurt, or captured. Adora wasn’t the kind to let herself be captured…   
She stayed up all night wondering so many things, but her main concern as the sun started to raise was what was Shadow Weaver gonna do once she realized Adora was gone…  
It was time for everyone to start waking up and she hadn’t sleep a bit. Nobody asked anything while getting ready that morning, it was the elephant in the room, the four of them were assuming, or hoping, that Adora would show up at the door at any second until Lonnie finally popped the question.  
“Does anybody know where she go?”  
All eyes turned to Catra, if anyone would know anything about this that would be her, but she wasn’t gonna tell on her, she didn’t want to get that dumbass in trouble. Not if she was going to be back any second now.  
“Maybe we should tell Shadow Weaver. Maybe she can find her with a spell or…”  
“Shut up, Kyle. We are not telling her.” Catra didn’t even let him finish before snapping at him. If Shadow Weaver found out her golden child was gone, Beast Island was going to be too small a punishment.  
“You are not telling me what, Cadets?” Fuck. She was so concentrated on Adora that she didn’t even realize that Shadow Weaver had sneaked up on them.  
Against her desire that woman placed a hand on her cheek, it hurt like hell, burying that squeletical hand against her face. At that point in life Catra new there was no point in trying to resist, she was inside her head, looking through her memories, how they had “borrowed” a skiff and had gone to the whispering woods, Adora’s insistence on the sword, and the both of them waking up at night before her disappearance.  
Before she could recover from the intrusion of Shadow Weaver on her head, Catra saw the same gross hand grabbing her arm, marking her fingers over her skin. In what seemed seconds she had been dragged into the Black Garnet chamber and an intense fear embraced her, the air was colder there, and it was as if any trace of light was hiding from her sight. Not even her feline eyes were of service to her in that moment, all she could see was the silhouette of the sorceress moving frantically around the room while making a spell…  
The room was suddenly invaded by light as a rune written in the air turned into an image of Adora. Catra felt so relieved to see finally see her, even if only was through a spell and right next to the woman of her nightmares. She was alright…  
And as soon as Adora got back she was going kill her.   
Catra took a step forward to get a closer look, the blonde wasn’t alone, she was being taken? But Adora wasn’t resisting, she was just following her captives way, was there something she wasn’t seeing…?  
“They are heading towards Thaymor.” Shadow Weaver’s illusion disappeared from the air as suddenly as it had appeared and she turned to Catra. Even with a mask on her face the girl could notice the murdery look she was giving her. “You are going and bringing Adora back. Understood?”  
This was what she had been waiting all of her life, a chance to see the world, a chance to be away from the Fright Zone, a chance to feel just a little bit of freedom… It was everything she had wanted since she was a kid, but her fantasy wasn’t complete. Adora was missing from her side, but Catra was going to bring her back, and soon they would be the ones calling the shots.

Adora accommodated herself in their bed, and Catra finally snapped out of that hurtful memory before it got worse. By whatever cosmic force that controlled their lives, the feline had actually succeeded in that mission, Adora was once again by her side, she had brought her back from the dead at the Heart, still not sure about how that happened but whatever, and now they were both at Brightmoon, helping Sparkles run Etheria.   
This was definitely not how Catra had pictured her future life, but damn it was so much better.


	2. A rose by any other name can still hurt (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catra recounts the events from a life that seems long gone.  
> A life with a different name.  
> A life without the Horde.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> //Trigger Warning\\\  
> This chapter deals with themes of war, anxiety, parental loss and psicological abuse.

She came back to visit her cell once more.  
The feline couldn’t decipher why in hell was she coming back almost everyday to see the woman who had made her life a living hell, but once again she saw herself standing in front of her.  
She came up with absurd little excuses, like she needed to find an inconsequential document, or she asked for advice on what to do for a certain mission. But she never really listened to whatever the woman answered, mainly because she had learned a long time ago to turned down Shadow Weavers voice on her head, but also because she wasn’t really asking for the real question she wanted to ask.  
Catra kept holding back from asking.  
She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer, or it may had been worse to know there wasn’t even one. Still, that day the feline had come prepared to finally ask the question that had been bugging her all those years.

Catra entered the cell holding a lunch tray. Under normal circumstances she would have let the food fall at her feet so that Shadow Weaver would eat from the floor like she had made Catra do a few times in the past, but not today. Instead, the brunette walked up to the woman and carefully laid the food in front of her, backing up enough to be out of the woman’s reach, but still being inside the cell.  
She sat down and crossed her legs without taking an eye from the sorcerer, who was holding her gaze with the fake eyes of the mask she always had on her face.  
“Do you need something, Catra?”  
The woman asked her with a fake maternal tone, like she was pretending to care or show preoccupation for the girl sitting in front of her. The feline knew the intent behind that tone was for her to lower her guard, and even thought she was totally aware of her intentions she couldn’t help but soften the look in her face.  
Her eyebrows, who had been frowning the whole time, relaxed, and she took the liberty to finally drop her gaze, fixating at the cracks on the floor or any little detail she could concentrate on.  
“Why…” Her voice barely came out of her mouth. “Why were you like that to me?”  
She could have phrased it better, but she hoped she had gotten her point across. Why did she hate her. Why did she neglect her. Just why.  
Catra was left waiting for an answer that didn’t came to her, and for a minute she actually considered the idea that Shadow Weaver hadn’t heard her, or maybe she had fell asleep under the mask and the girl just couldn’t tell. But as time passed without an answer she just had to accept that this was a battle she wouldn’t be able to win. If the sorcerer wanted to take her reasoning for hating Catra to the grave, then so be it.  
The girl waited a little bit more for an answer until she finally decided to stand up and leave that place. Before she actually started walking away, a voice interrupted her dramatic exit from behind.  
“Elizabeth”  
It had been a little over a decade since she had heard that name.  
“Your name used to be Elizabeth, wasn’t it”  
Catra stopped right on her feet, standing right outside the cell. A chilling sensation coming up her spine that made her whole body shiver suddenly embraced her. She could hear the woman talking behind her, but the feline wasn’t hearing anymore, there were so many thoughts crossing her mind that the only thing she saw herself being able to do was closing the cell without even looking at its inside, and running.  
She started running.  
She was trying to outrun a past ghost.  
The cold walls of the Fright Zone all looked the same as she stumbled across them. The girl felt as if she was running in a labyrinth, trapped in that hell hole like she had been all those years ago.  
That ghost from the past had finally reached her.

“Mh… I wonder where could Elizabeth be hiding…” The little girl was covering her eyes and giggling as she was hiding behind the curtains, completely convinced that covering her eyes made the trick to being completely unnoticeable. “She is not behind the couch… And I already checked under the table…” Elizabeth could feel the woman looking for her getting closer and closer until she felt the cover of the curtain being taken away. No worries, as long as her hands where covering her face no one would see her. “Found you! Oh… No one is there”  
The little girl kept giggling uncontrollably, her hand cover had worked perfectly and she was now invisible.  
“BOO!” She screamed as soon as she took her hands off her face, launching herself at her mother arms. The woman made an exaggerated surprise face, which only confirmed to the little girl that her cover was perfect.  
“Oh, there you are” The woman picked her up smiling and started spinning around the room with her daughter cuddled in her arms.  
The woman’s face was a blur in her memories, but there were some things she could still see as clear as day, like the fact that she was very tall and slim, and she was absolutely beautiful… And her eyes. Two yellow eyes staring back at her mismatched ones. She was also very sure of the woman having a tail and cat ears just like her, but that could be her own memory betraying her.  
The memory started to fade away slowly, herself still crawled against her mother chest bugging her with her little tail and the woman softly passing her fingers through her mane.

When Catra came back to her senses she realized she had made it all the way back to the barracks. It had been a while since she didn’t sleep in that room with the rest of her team, but for whatever reason she found herself standing by the door. Maybe in her subconscious she knew she didn’t want to be alone, she needed to be around people who got her even if she didn’t feel like sharing what was troubling her mind.  
She jumped up to her bed and quickly sunk into the blankets. The feline was aware other people were staring and wondering what was she doing there, but no one really dared to question the decision of their Forced Captain of spending the night. All of them had silently understood that she was in pain, and this pain was not going anywhere any time soon, not when the only person who used to know how to ease that pain wasn’t around any more.  
In a matter of minutes the girl had fell asleep, and the images that took up her mind were already familiar to her.

“I wanna go too!” Elizabeth hooked herself to her mother’s leg, hoping that the woman would have no option but to carry her to the meeting.  
“Baby, I already told you little kids can’t come to the princess meetings” The woman looked down at the little fur ball that was her daughter and kneed down next to her, cupping Elizabeth faced gently with one hand.  
“But I’m not a little kid” The girl started pouting with her lips, hoping that she could convince her mother like that. She didn’t understand why her mom had to go so often and for so long sometimes, and why, more often than not, she would return with marks around her skins, bruises, cuts, or even red stains. She wanted to know where those came from.  
“Well, this is more like adult talk. You’ll get bored there and you can’t be playing around” Elizabeth could see the woman trying to resist to the little girls charms.  
“I promise I will be good. Please mommy” The little feline hung herself around her mother’s neck, and she knew she had won the moment the woman stood up with the girl still clinging to her.  
“I guess there’s nothing wrong with you coming this time… We are only going to talk…”  
The woman took her daughter in her hands and positioned her in her back, quickly turning herself into a giant cat.  
That was her mom’s superpower, the reason why she had been invited to hung out with the princesses even when she didn’t hold a title or had a kingdom of her own.  
They quickly got to Brightmoon, and even though there were people she recognized most of them were adults, like the lady with the chicken wings and the sorcerer guy that stood next to her, or the couple of teen girls who she had come to know a Windy girl and Net girl.  
“Welcome, Princess Ambar… And Elizabeth” The queen greeted them as soon as her mother had return to her humanoid form, and got close the little girl to smile at her “The meeting is about to commence, so perhaps you would like to go play with my daughter”  
The girl hadn’t made it this far to be separated from her mom right now, so she shook her head and cuddled into the woman’s arms.  
“I told her she could stay as long as she was quiet” Her mother smiled nervously at the queen, who just sighed at her and went back to her seat.  
“Very well, then…”  
All the other princesses and princes took their correspondent seats and the meeting started. They were playing with dolls over the table, talking something about tactics and a war. Elizabeth understood immediately what the game they were playing was, they had to knock over the figurines with the weird logo but only using their own dolls.  
“Ambar, that plan won’t work. We don’t have the manpower to try and attack the Fright Zone directly” The sorcerer spoke to her mom and he almost looked defeated. They all did.  
“Mommy, are you losing the game?” The little girl whispered to her mother’s ear.  
“It’s not a game, honey… But yes, it looks like I’m losing right now”  
“Can I play too?” Elizabeth didn’t hear the It’s not a game part, and neither did she listened to whatever her mother was saying to stop her from climbing on to the table.  
All the adults were trying to get her off the table at once, trying to prevent her from grabbing the pieces and creating a mess. But they all stopped on their feet as soon as the little feline started talking.  
“If this doll and my mommy’s doll stand here, this other doll goes here...” She started rearranging the different figurines, being careful not to touch the dolls that had the weird symbol as those were not the ones she had to use to win. Her explanation as to what each doll had to do was vague, and instead she just took them in her hands and started making motions and sounds to explain for her.  
“That… That might actually work….” All the adults were looking at her in awe, but the sorcerer was the only one who dared to say what the rest of them were thinking. “We might actually stand a chance at defeating the Horde for good”  
“Did I win?” Elizabeth crawled back to her mom, who was just as perplexed as everyone else.  
“I think you did, baby…” She whispered without taking her eyes out the table.  
“No… No, this is ridiculous. We are not following an infant’s plan to defeat the Horde!” The queen spouted, with her face getting darker and redder at every passing second.  
“Well this is the best idea so far, so unless someone else can come up with something better, then…” The girl with the nets started talking in her defense, which only made the chicken woman angrier.  
“I have already come up with a better plan. So Princess Amber, I’m going to request that you take your child somewhere else so we can proceed with the meeting.”  
Elizabeth was angry for a moment that she hadn’t won the game, but was even angrier that she was taken from the room. 

The feline woke up in a cold sweat.  
Everything was too familiar to have been a dream. No… She had already seen that before, but her mind couldn’t place the memory around a specific time in her life.  
“You okay there, Catra?” Lonnie’s voice interrupted her thoughts.  
“Yeah… I just…”  
“You don’t sound okay” The girl’s tone was hard, maybe even annoyed at the fact that she had woken up in the middle of the night.  
“I just…” Catra was trying to come with something, but she was still too shaken by her dream to be able to come up with a snarky reply. “I dreamed about... remembered something… From many years ago”  
“I get those dreams too… From before getting to the Horde” None of the girls was looking at each other, but still she has never felt more connected to Lonnie.  
She had never told anyone about that past life. Mainly because she didn’t talked to anyone besides Adora, and Adora just didn’t get it, she never had a life outside of the Horde…  
“I try not to think much about it. It makes it easier for it to go away” Lonnie whispered.  
“I often try…” A new voice entered the conversation.  
“Nobody asked you, Kyle”  
“Yeah, shut up, Kyle. It’s none of your business”  
Catra smiled a little, even if no one could see her. Specially because no one could see her. After that brief conversation all the voices went back to sleep, and so did she. No dreams this time.

The next morning Catra woke up early. Even without the dreams she still wasn’t able to have a good night of sleep, and she wasn’t in the mood to see the squad. She went back to work almost immediately, checking out on Entrapta, making sure she hadn’t gotten herself killed by whatever was it that she was working on, meeting up with Scorpia to see if there were any news on She-Ra or the princesses, getting her tasks for the day from an officer whom she had refused to learn their name…  
The only thing she was going to skip from her daily routine was going to see Shadow Weaver. She couldn’t deal with her right now.  
And so she went on to focus on the first thing in her task list.  
Something something Erelandia something something.  
The town had being taken over by the Horde the day before, and she had to go check on the loot that had been brought back to the Fright Zone.  
Money, a few metals things that could be used for weapons, actual weapons… Nothing really of her interest ever came back, but Catra would still check one by one, just in case something interesting came along.  
But of course today something caught her attention, because apparently the universe had made that day the day of bothering Catra until she completely loses it.  
She held in her hands a plaque, with a golden inscription written on the front.  
“In honour of the Princess Alliance, for their service to the city of Erelandia…”  
The inscription kept going, but the feline threw it away anyway.  
“It’s garbage. Ring me up when you are done here, I have other matters to attend to” She said to the soldier nearer to her before leaving the room. Another cloud of imagines and noises stampeding through her brain.

That day, instead of her waking up early to go bug her mom, Elizabeth was woken up by her mom who had sneaked up on her room.  
“Hey Elizabeth…” The woman took the child in her arms and hold her close to her chest. “What do you say about staying some time in Brightmoon…?”  
The little girl was still half asleep in her mother’s arms, bringing one finger close to her mouth.  
“Are we taking a vacation?”  
“Only you, honey. I have to stay here”  
“I wanna stay with mommy…”  
“I know… I want to stay with you too” Her mother kissed her forehead and the kid could feel little drops of water falling to her face. “But mommy has to stay here for a while to make sure everything here is ok”  
Elizabeth didn’t really understood what was going on when her mom got up lifting her in her arms. Taking a little backpack from her wardrobe and filling it with all of the clothes she could stick in it.  
“Do I have to go now?”  
“Yes… All of the kids are going there now with King Micah. And you don’t want to be late for that, do you?”  
“No…” The girl whispered against her mom neck as she was trying to fight sleep. “And what are you going to do here…?”  
There was a brief silence before her mother opened her mouth again, but her voice was different, it sounded as if she had a hairball on her chest that didn’t let her talk.  
“Mommy is going to play a game… A game against some very mean people… So that they stop being mean and leave us alone for good…”  
“Is this like the game we played the other day at Brightmoon? Why can’t I play?”  
“Not quite…You see, this game is dangerous and kids aren’t allowed because you could get hurt. And we don’t want you getting hurt”  
Elizabeth wasn’t sure when had they gotten out of the house, but when she finally opened her eyes she saw herself surrounded by all the other kids in the town. Some of them were crying, other, like her, were falling asleep on their feet, other were clinging onto their parents, or their parents clinging onto them. It was hard to tell.  
“Is this everyone?” A voice she recognized as the sorcerer from Brightmoon speak near her, surrounded by many people dressed the same with the kingdom’s insignia, and they were taking one or two kids into their hands. The man was pointing quickly at each kid surrounding them, counting slowly to himself.  
“Yes, I think so…” Her mom followed the same procedure, counting tiny heads, reaching the same number the sorcerer had. “Micah, are you sure you don’t need me to go with you?”  
“Ambar, the Horde can be here any minute now. And for Angella’s plan to work we all need you to stay here and secure the town”  
“I know but…”  
“It’s going to be okay… Soon this will all be over”  
Her mother hold Elizabeth tight for a few second, whispering into her ear how much she loved her and how they would see each other in just a few days before letting go of her and passing the kid onto the arms of the man.  
“It’s time to go”  
The sorcerer made a signal to all the people surrounding him and started marching towards the woods, followed by a troupe of sobbing children.  
It was only going to be a few days without her mom, and then it would all go back to normal. It was going to be okay. It was…  
She started falling asleep to that thought until the sound of a thunder made her open her eyes and her little claws went deep into the man’s skin.  
“They are here…” The sorcerer spoke to himself and he let the feline on the floor. “Go with the other, Elizabeth. Quick”  
The girl was paralyzed as she looked back to the village they had just left behind them. At least half of it was covered in flames, and the other half was being manually destroyed by people wearing the strange symbol as the dolls she had played with not two days ago.  
She was scared. She had never been so scared before in her life and she didn’t know what to do. She wanted to hide. Her instincts were telling her to run away and not let anyone find her.  
She needed to turn herself invisible like she did when she was playing.  
She covered her eyes at the same time the sorcerer was making weird drawings with his hands, and when she opened her eyes again she realize she couldn’t see herself. She had made herself invisible, along with man beside her and all the other kids.  
“The illusion isn’t going to fool them forever. We have to move quick.” The man said while holding Elizabeth again. She couldn’t see him, as she had made them invisible, but she let him lead the way.  
Another thunder noise struck right behind them, and then another. And another. All coming onto their direction but none of them hitting her. Until one did.  
The man beside her let down a scream as the invisibility fade. She must have lost focus. Everyone around her was starting to appear again, and one by one they started being grabbed by the numerous people with the weird logo.  
And soon they took her and the sorcerer too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second part to this is going to come out soon, I just got sad from writing this first half and didn't want to kill the mood.


	3. A rose by any other name can still hurt (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> //Trigger Warning\\\   
> Same as the previous chapter

She shook herself out of that memory.  
Catra found herself in the direction to her own room when tears started shoving down her face. She was shaking and once more she wanted to disappear, except that she had come to accept over the years that she couldn’t really turn invisible. The feline was halfway to her room when a giant figure crossed her path.  
“Hey! Watch it!” She snapped while quickly drying the tears from her eyes.  
“Wildcat! Oh finally found you. Hordak’s been looking…” The scorpion in front of her stopped right on her track as soon as she saw her face “Are you okay? Did something happened to you?”  
Catra covered her face for a second, as she made her best effort to not look like the total wreck she was that day. She felt Scorpia coming closer to her but the feline took a step away while trying to compose herself.  
“I’m okay. What did Hordak want?”  
“You sure? You don’t look very good…”  
“I told you I’m okay!” She snapped once more before Scorpia handed her a folder completely full of papers.  
“If you say so… Hordak wants to see you at the sanctum to check on the new recruits from Erelandia”  
Oh right… That was her job now that she had taken Shadow Weaver’s spot…  
Of course she had to do this, specially that day with all the weird memories running rampant through her head.  
She opened the files and found a lot of pictures of little kids with little annotations beside them about strengths and whatnot. She made her way to the sanctum looking at each of those files carefully.  
Before she knew it Catra was standing in front of a row of babies and toddlers. It was her work to decide which of those babies deserved to become a Horde Soldier and which didn't make the cut. Which of those kids were going to be trained specially by her to become part of a squad, and which would never even get a name and would go on to become mindless soldiers.  
She couldn’t do it.  
She couldn’t choose. 

Elizabeth couldn’t tell how much time had passed since she had been taken by the mean people. All she knew was that during that whole time she hadn’t seen anybody who she barely recognized.   
As soon as they had been captured she was separated from the rest of the kids and the adults accompanying them. Her hands and feet had been tied down on the way to the mean people’s home, and once they got her they freed her, not before spraying her with some weird red powder.  
“So I see you managed to capture the daughter of the princess. The magic of the Black Garnett should be enough to neutralize any signs of magic for a while”   
A sour voice entered the room and everything suddenly got darker and colder. A presence lingering around her made her uneasy, as scared as she had been the moment she was taken, or even more terrified. Elizabeth dared to take a peek out of the box and she was met by two adults talking in front of her, without paying the kid much attention.  
Both of them were intimidating, as was the place she was in. Everything was so dark around her, and so green at the same time. It was a place straight out of her nightmares.  
“It’s worthless. That thing hasn’t inherited her mother’s power.”  
“Keep her around. There’s still a chance that she has magic.”  
“Are you suggesting that I raise this animal?!” The room turned even darker as the woman raised her voice.  
“Yes I am. Now take her away from here.”  
“My Lord, I can’t just take her at one of my squads, they are all full. And I don’t think this thing has the ability to keep up”  
“Does it look like I care? Take her or I’ll take away what I have given you!”  
The argument was heating up as they both kept trying to pass her on to the other, but she didn’t want to be passed on, she wanted to go back home to her mom…   
Elizabeth’s eyes started to fill up with tears when she noticed something moving around the outside of the box.  
“Hello!” A pair of blue eyes suddenly appeared right in front of her. A girl her age was looking at her from outside the box. “Who are you?”  
The feline was startled by this and she fell on her back to the other side of the box, with her brain so full of questions about who was that girl that she didn’t even answered the question.  
“You don’t talk? That’s okay. My name is Adora” The blonde in front of her seemed completely oblivious at the conversation going on her back between the adults, and instead she offered her a hand “Come on, I’m gonna help you out of there”   
Elizabeth stared at the girls eyes and then at the hand that was getting closer to her, then back at the blue eyes that were now accompanied by a big smile with a gap on a place where a tooth must have been.  
The feline finally decided to hold onto Adora’s hand, who quickly pulled her out to the box while knocking it over on the process. Once she was out of the box she was ready to let go of the blonde’s hand but it seemed as if the girl had others plans, dragging her to pair of adults with a bright smile.  
“You already sent the princess And the king to Beast Island without permission. Don’t test your luck, Shadow Weaver, or the next one is going to be you” The man stated right as the girls got to their side.  
“Shadow Weaver! Look! I made a friend!” The blonde had a proud smile on her face. Elizabeth, on the other hand, had her ears laying low against her head, and her tail was stuck between her legs. The woman looked even scarier from up close.  
“Adora, what have I told you about going around touching dirty things”  
“But she is not a thing. She is my friend!” The girl frowned and started clinging on to the woman’s clothes, pulling her down. “Can she stay? Please please please...”  
The blonde kept on repeating the word “Please” more times than Elizabeth could process, adding to that the serious look of the man, who had already requested the same thing Adora was begging for.  
“I… Fine. Keep it. But if it does anything that jeopardizes your future the she’ll join her mother on a one way trip to Beast Island” Her look had turn from Adora to the men standing beside her before, that threat going more to him than to the pair of girls..  
The shadow woman left the room right after, taking with her the darkness and coldness that had been bothering the feline all this time. Adora, holding onto her, following right after.  
“You know, if you are gonna be staying here you are gonna need a name…” Elizabeth was still with to many things going on around her head to be able to formulate an answer. “Well, one of your eyes is yellow, like a cat… And your other eye is blue like mine… Cat… Adora… Catora… No. Adocat… That one doesn’t suit you either.”  
They just kept walking around the place, rambling nonsense about a name, the blonde leading the brunette around a labyrinth of green metallic halls.  
“I got it! Catra! Catra Applesauce MeowMeow The First” The blonde laughed to herself and the feline let a small laugh come out of her mouth. “Oh so you can talk”  
“It’s a funny name” Elizabeth… Well, Catra, she guessed, let herself talk to the girl guiding her and it just felt good. Like in the middle of the messed up situation she was in, there was actually someone here for her.  
“Let’s start again, then.” The blonde stopped right on her track and faced the feline “Hello, my name is Adora. And you?”  
“Hey Adora, I am Catra. Just Catra”   
“Oh, common… It’s not funny if you don’t say the rest”   
“I’m not going to say it” The girl laughed and pushed the blonde girl a little bit, and she got pushed in return.   
And so they kept going pestering each other for a while, laughing, playing, and Elizabeth let herself forget for a while what had happened to her.

This was definitely worse than whatever it was that happened to her when she broke into the She-Ra temple. This was much worse. Much more painful.  
She eventually had to push all this intrusive thoughts down and concentrate on the task at hand.   
It was hard, modeling those kids destinies according to which side of the bed Catra had woken up to. But she had to do it, because she was given that chance, and if she didn’t do it then the threat of Beast Island would be much more a reality than just empty words.  
There was a little blonde girl staring at her, with a scared look on her face.   
It was as if a younger version of Adora had come back to haunt her, and Catra couldn’t bring herself to look her in the eyes. The feline just stared at her folder with the kid’s pictures and pointed to her right side, the side were all the kids who were going to get named and sorted into squads, and the little blonde girl followed the instructions, still with a terrified look on her face.   
And for a moment, Catra actually got it. She understood why Shadow Weaver had decided to keep the Adora’s of the world by her side, instead of the Catra’s. The Catra’s that would slow the Adora’s down. The Catra’s who pretended to have power in order to survive.  
She still needed to hear it from her, though.

As soon as Catra was done with the recruits she went once more to the holding cell where the shadow woman seemed to be waiting for her.  
“Are you here to ignore me again, Catra?”  
“No… I want to know. Why?”  
“You already know the answer, so why bother”  
“Just tell me.”  
“You remind me of myself. The people like you and I… We weren’t born with power, we weren’t born lucky like Adora or others, and yet we seek power everywhere we go, leeching in to the power others can offer you without being deserving of it. I couldn’t have that near Adora, I had to protect and mold that power into something useful, and you, being like me, would slow her down, trying to take that power for yourself.”  
Catra stared silently at the woman, knowing she was right about her, having proven Shadow Weaver’s point herself by picking the blonde girl to be on her team.   
It felt like all her life she had been pursuing a power that wasn’t hers for the taking. Convincing herself of having invisibility powers as a kid, and later using Adora’s status as the golden child to protect herself, and now utilizing the power of the people around her to forge her way to the top of the hierarchy of the Horde.   
“Well, looks like your plan didn’t really worked”  
Catra stood there for a few seconds before turning away again. This wouldn’t be the last time she would come to visit, but it still felt as if Shadow Weaver’s mask had dropped before her and that ghost from the past was finally at rest for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the end isn't like it happened in the show, but I needed a conclussion to this.  
> Also, a few clarifications:  
> -Spinerella and Netossa don't recognize Catra as the little Elizabeth, on one hand because I'm sure they were too busy flirting with each other during the meetings, and because Elizabeth, along with anyone who got captured by the horde was presumed dead  
> -That was also the mission that Angella talked about on the show, the one that got Micah "killed"  
> -Also, even though Ambar was sent to Beast Island, she is not alive by the time Bow and Adora go there to rescue Micah and Entrapta  
> -Though I may write more about her

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time posting on AO3 and also publishing something I wrote in English, so please excuse any formating error or typos.  
> Also any suggestions are accepted <3


End file.
